


All Was Golden in the Sky

by spacecitytraffic



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, buddy and vespa get to be young and do crime, i promise it's a pretty chill fic tho, it's been such a blast creating with y'all, teenagers robbing parties and sailing into the stars, what more could you ask for, written for penumbra wlw week!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24418618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacecitytraffic/pseuds/spacecitytraffic
Summary: Buddy Aurinko may be among the best thieves in the galaxy, but she's also a teenager. So if her best opportunity to rob the Altair family blind is at a party, well, she might as well have fun with it. Unfortunately, however, there are a few problems with that. The assassin Vespa Ilkay has been sent to kill the same wealthy heir Buddy is here to rob, for one. And that heir... well. Buddy and Vespa might just be in for a more complicated evening than they thought.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko / Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35
Collections: READ MORE WLW FIC COWARDS





	All Was Golden in the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Penumbra WLW Week, so you know it had to be good fun. Thanks to everybody for putting this event together, and thanks specifically to @meverri for being such a wonderful beta!! Please go check out their stuff, it's amazing. And welcome, traveler. I hope you enjoy your read.

Buddy Aurinko is many things, in her own humble opinion. She’s been a thief, a nomad, a self-proclaimed icon, and the greatest (and only) chef in her little ring of criminals. But she’s also a teenager, if you can bring yourself to believe it. And tonight, being a teenager comes first. 

With a grin, Buddy strides through the doors of the gymnasium, briskly scanning the neon-lit crowd. Her earpiece is buzzing with her crew’s terse voices, but she’s already made the executive decision to tune them out. If she’s going to pull a heist at a private high-school party, then why not have a little fun while she’s at it? The squeak of her sneakers against the linoleum floor rings out over the blasting music as she darts through the crowd, hiking up her skirts in both fists. Who says she can’t run surveillance and grab a glass of punch at the same time? 

And then a flash of choppy green hair catches her eye, and Buddy’s grin widens. Turns out, she does know someone at this party, after all. Today keeps getting better and better. 

Vespa Ilkay wants to scream. She’s already feeling self-conscious enough, what with the colorful shirt and the scraped knees and the makeup she’s never worn in public before. The music is giving her a migraine. The dancing is incomprehensible. The rumors about her mark are contradictory and confusing. And if one more person jostles her or bumps into her or even brushes against her, she swears, she  _ swears _ …

Focus, Vespa. You’re here for a reason. 

Scan the gym. Spot the entitled Altair kid and his stupid smirk. Cut through the crowd like a knife, like one of the two blades hidden underneath that gaudy outershirt. Shrink down, swim through the shadows, get just close enough, and then...

“Well, if it isn’t Liam Altair!” a familiar voice rings out. And there she is. That redheaded thief again, grinning like a million suns and sparkling like a goddamn galaxy stuffed into a party dress. “It’s so  _ good _ to see you again, it’s been  _ far _ too long, darling…” She throws her arm around the stupid rich kid, and her fingers brush the golden pin on his lapel. And in that moment, Vespa realizes it: that thief is here to rob the same mark Vespa is here to kill. 

Oh god _ damnit _ . 

Buddy laughs merrily, making a production of a hair-toss that could land her a job in shampoo commercials if she wanted it. But the effortless tilt of her head is actually scoring her something far more important: a glance at the green-haired assassin. The angry girl seems to be backing off, and what’s more, her too-big floral shirt quite suits her. That’s not relevant, though. What matters is that Buddy has the mark all to herself, at least for now. So she might as well make the most of it.

“And then, my parents said—would you believe it, they actually said this!” Liam Altair, heir to his family’s fortune and soon-to-be joint head of their megacorp, snorts at his own story. “They told me I could pick which part of the company I wanted! Like it was a choice. Everybody knows they’ve just been grooming me to pick up the publicity end of things, I’d be in way over my head if I picked anything else…”

“Oh, I really feel for you, darling,” Buddy replies sorrowfully, nursing her punch sip by sip. “My parents won’t even let me pick out my own brand images.”

“See? She gets it,” Liam announces to the circle of admirers around him. Then he glances over at Buddy with a slight frown. “Remind me… remind me how I know you again?”

“That awful leadership summit, two years back,” she lies smoothly. “Remember, that? Oh, I’ll never forget that time when we broke into…” Her eyes flick across the crowd, and her pulse spikes. 

No green hair, not even a  _ glimpse  _ of that distinctive floral shirt. The assassin was just there, talking to a few of Liam’s friends and looking startled by what she’d heard, and now she’s gone without a trace. No, this isn’t exactly what most people would call good. 

“The swimming pool! Yes!” The rich boy’s nervous, enthusiastic grin reveals that he may be a few too many spiked glasses of punch in. “Re… Rebecca, right?” Clearly a wild guess to save face, but she’ll go with it.

“It’s Rachel, darling, you’re close.” Buddy smiles indulgently and pats his shoulder, subtly feeling for the ID card that must be in one of his pockets somewhere. If the assassin is out of view, Buddy is running out of time. She’ll have to work fast. “I know it’s been a while, but I’m  _ so _ glad I could make it to your party.”

“And what a party!” Liam throws his head back to laugh, but there’s something uncertain in his voice. “My last night of being seventeen. After this, it’s all business for me, apparently. Might as well live it up while I can.”

And then Buddy spots the blue-black of a bruise peeking over his collar for just an instant, and at least seventy percent of her focus goes rushing into that newly opened channel. “Liam, darling,” she begins with a frown. “Are you quite all right? You look a bit…”

“I’m fine,” he snaps, tugging his collar higher up on his neck. He takes a long swig of his punch, then slurs, “What were we talking about? Ah. Right. Business.”

“Business,” Buddy echoes, cooing into his ear. “That must be so terribly boring…”

“It is when Uncle Ferdinand gets to talking about it,” Liam grumbles. “Or, second uncle, or uncle-in-law, or whatever. Talk about a windbag. If I had my way, I wouldn’t have to listen to a single thing he says again, but I guess I don’t have a choice now, do I...”

And there goes another fraction of Buddy’s attention, cascading through yet another canal like there’s no tomorrow. She’s done her research. Liam Altair’s admiration for his uncle is famous across galaxies. He even named a little dog “Ferdie” in his honor. “I understood that you two were close,” she said with a careful frown. “Did something change?”

“Close?” Liam snorts, clearly spiralling further into drunkenness by the second. “Well, if you mean…” Then something seems to dawn on him, and his sallow cheeks blanch. “Oh. Oh, wait. Right. We, um… We may have our differences, but I really do love him. A lot. Apparently. I even named my cat after him, or some shit like that, God, I dunno…”

Buddy watches, troubled, as he wanders through his own words and then quaffs the rest of his punch in a single gulp. This isn’t lining up, but she can’t work out what that  _ means _ . “Liam, darling…” But she doesn’t make it further than that before a flash of green materializes at her elbow.

“Hey,  _ Rachel _ ,” the furious assassin interrupts with a glare that’s probably intended to be significant. “Mind if I borrow you for a minute?”

“Oh, I don’t…” 

“Great.” The girl grabs the sleeve of Buddy’s embroidered jacket and starts dragging her away. “Our song just came on, and I’d kill for a good dance.”

Vespa’s head is pounding in time with the music blasting over the loudspeakers. This changes everything. This isn’t good. She yanks the sparkly redhead onto the dancefloor and grips both of her hands tight so she can’t run away. 

“Listen,  _ Rachel _ —”

“I was in the  _ middle _ of something,” she hisses. “Something wasn’t right with him, and If you hadn’t pulled me away, I could’ve figured it out, I could’ve gotten his key, I could’ve—”

“You could’ve gotten him  _ killed _ ,” Vespa growls. 

“I was under the impression that  _ you _ were the one trying to do that.” The mulish thief presses her ruby lips together. “Or are you not the assassin I keep running into lately?”

“Things just changed.” Vespa’s eyes flick over to Liam Altair. “We can’t hurt him, he’s just a puppet, he’s not—”

“He may be a pathetic drunk, but he’s about to be a legal adult,” the thief retorts, trying to yank away. “He’s responsible for his own choices. And ever since his family started including him in corporate decision-making, those choices have gotten more and more megalomaniacal. I wouldn’t condone stabbing him at a  _ party _ , but I think I’m justified to—”

“No, he’s  _ not!” _ Vespa knows she’s drawing way too much attention right now. She’s not dancing, and her barely restrained muttering is getting louder and louder. So she tightens her grip on the thief’s wrists, determined to get this over with and then disappear. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s  _ not _ Liam Altair. Because Liam Altair is  _ dead _ .” 

The thief goes still in Vespa’s grasp. “That doesn’t make any sense, darling.” But Vespa can see her gears already starting to turn.

“Yes, it does,” she growls through her teeth. “You said something wasn’t lining up with that kid. Talk to me about it.”

“Well…” The thief frowns. “He said some things that didn’t exactly square with what I’d researched, but then, then he backed out of it the moment I called him on it. And he did seem different than how I expected, but it could’ve been the alcohol, I suppose… Oh, and there was this  _ bruise _ , right there on his neck…”

Vespa raises an eyebrow. “You know the Altair family has a history of getting away with whatever awful stuff they do to each other.”

“I know, but what does that have to do…”

“When did you say Liam’s decision-making started to get dangerous?” Vespa prods.

“Well…” The thief presses her lips together. “I said it was right as he was let into the decision making process, but… well, really, he seemed like more of a stabilizing element for a few months, until he abruptly went off the deep end…” 

“Picture this,” Vespa hisses, leaning in until she can smell the thief’s spicy perfume. “The Altairs try to bring their favorite son into the boardroom early. But for some reason, he hasn’t totally rejected every shred of human decency in him just yet. He starts contradicting them behind closed doors. It gets bad, it gets loud, and then bang, bang _ , bang _ ...”

“No…”

“And then, in the aftermath, they realize they have a golden opportunity on their hands. Buy off an actor and a good enough plastic surgeon, and suddenly you have another voice in the conference room that’s totally under your control. And suddenly, you have a scapegoat for all your most dangerous ideas, the ones you’re too chicken to say for yourself.”

The thief is going pale. “But… even if you’re right, he’d still be complicit. So I still don’t see anything wrong with nicking the pathetic boy’s ID card for the night.”

“You really think anybody would work for the Altairs of their own free will?” Vespa narrows her eyes. “They own him, and you know it. You wanna send some desperate, powerless kid back to the Altairs with no key card, and see what they do to him? Do you really think they wouldn’t be able to just hire another actor when this one goes belly up in some gutter? Does that sit right with you,  _ Rachel _ ?”

She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head to clear it. “How on earth did you find all of this out?”

“His friends are just sharp enough to notice a difference and just drunk enough to tell me all about it,” Vespa says with a shrug. “Then it was just a matter between a private security guard, the end of my knife, and all the right questions.”

“You’re fast,” the thief observes, arching an eyebrow.

“It’s either fast or dead, for me.” Vespa steps back and lets go of her wrists. “So. What are you gonna do?”

She shoves her hands into the pockets of her jacket, twisting her bottom lip between her teeth. “This still doesn’t absolve him of all moral responsibility…”

“No, but I don’t think we should  _ kill _ him for it, either.”

“I don’t like it, but you’re right.” The thief’s eyes dart back and forth, betraying a mind hard at work. Then she taps her earpiece to turn it off. “I’ll tell you what. My crew won’t like it if I show up empty handed, and I doubt yours will, either. So give me five minutes, and I’ll have a plan to get the two of us out of here together, topple the worst of the Altairs, and sail off into the sunset with pockets stuffed with cash. Just the two of us, finally calling our own shots. And we might even save this poor sap’s life, into the bargain.”

Vespa raises her eyebrows. “You really think you can do that?”

“I think  _ we _ can, darling.” The redheaded thief steps back once, twice, and smiles mischievously. “Meet me on the balcony in five, all right? I’ll see you soon, darling.” And then she turns and melts into the crowd, leaving Vespa alone on the dance floor. 

As she goes, an inconvenient realization barrels into Vespa like a truck: she already misses that stupid, heady perfume.

Buddy turns her earpiece back on as she strides across the room, weaving between dancers like a skier at a slalom. So much for a normal teenage party. Ah, well. She’s spent worse evenings in her time. As soon as the earbud reboots, Buddy winces at the onslaught she’d known was coming. 

— _ the hell, Buddy, where are you? What’s going on? We gotta get you out of there in ten, do you have the key yet? We’re not getting you out of there without that key— _

So she turns the earpiece back off, drops it onto the tile floor, and crushes it with the next swift step of her sneakers. She’ll have to work fast, move fast,  _ think _ fast, if she wants to stay one step ahead of her crew. But luckily for Mr. Not-Liam Not-Altair, she’s always worked best under pressure. 

She spots him within seconds, slouching against a table with furrowed brows and a sickly twist to his lips. Definitely too much punch in that boy. Buddy swings by the sweets table and dips her fingers into a bowl of mints, then sidles up to the actor-who-may-not-be-Liam with a sympathetic smile. 

“Peppermint, darling?” she offers, holding one out in the palm of her hand. “They help with the nausea, or so I’ve heard.”

“Thanks,” he mutters, clumsily taking it from her and fumbling with the wrapper. His nose is flushed, and his hair is even more of a mess than his suit. “I look that bad, huh? The Altairs are gonna kill me…”

“You don’t look awful, dear, I’m just observant.” Buddy lightly takes his elbow and leads him away from the table. “There’s a secluded spot over there, and I think the quiet would do you some good.”

“Yeah, probably.” Possibly-Not-Liam follows like a docile little lamb, grimacing all the while. “You… you said your name was Rebecca, right?”

“Rachel, darling,” she corrects with the patience of a saint. Then she glances over at him in performative concern. “But you’re worried about your parents finding out that you’ve been drinking? They provided the punch, didn’t they? I can’t imagine that they’d be too hard on you…”

“It’s less the drinking I’m worried about,” he mutters, stumbling a bit as he walks. “More the… the  _ talking _ part, that gets me into trouble.”

“Talking?” Buddy asks carefully, guiding him into a dimly-lit alcove away from the party’s main bustle. “Whatever do you mean?”

I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Liam slumps against a wall, ignoring her. “And it’s not even the parents that are the worst part, anyway. It’s that Ferdinand bastard, he’s the one they put in charge of me. If anyone’s a monster in the Altair… clan, group, what’s it called? Like a pack of goddamn wolves, just… just a…” He gestures in indistinct frustration. “A  _ family,  _ that’s it. The family, the Altair family, the… um... damn, where was I going with that?”

Buddy arches her eyebrows, leaning against the wall next to him. “Complaining about dear old Uncle Ferdie?” She’s always found that active listening is the sharpest weapon in her arsenal, especially when the target is as spectacularly drunk as this one. 

“Right. Bastard.” He pushes his hair out of his eyes, scowling. “I hate having to pretend to be best goddamn friends with him, I hate it, I  _ hate _ it. But what am I gonna do?” 

Time for some careful talking. Buddy tilts her head to the side, letting her hair fall charmingly across her collarbones. “Well, what do you think you should do?”

Almost-Definitely-Not-Liam shrugs petulantly. “Nothing. Just keep my head down, do as I’m told, don’t say anything stupid and screw it all up. It’s not a hard job. Not… not that it’s a job, I… Figure of speech. Obviously.”

“Hmm.” She studies the wreck of a boy carefully. “But if you could do anything… if you could really make him hurt, the way he’s making you hurt? What do you think you’d do?”

All it takes is a tiny shift in body language, a slightly narrowed pair of eyes, a slightly tenser jawline, and Buddy realizes she’s gone too far. Not-Liam gulps. “Why exactly do you wanna know?”

Crap. “Liam, dear, I just…”

“No, you  _ know _ I’m not supposed to be talking about any of this, you  _ know _ …” Liam-2.0 pushes himself up off the wall and takes a faltering step away from her. “I should go, I should get back to the party, I…”

Buddy’s hand shoots out to grab his tie. She leans in close, grateful that she’d had the foresight to get him alone. “You’re not going anywhere,  _ Liam _ . Or should I even call you that?”

Bingo. The boy Buddy has by the throat is definitely not Liam Altair, judging by the paleness in his cheeks and the panic in his eyes. “How… where…”

“I know you’re being paid by the Altairs,” Buddy hisses, yanking him even closer. “I know you’re not their real son. I know  _ everything _ . And who knows? I may have had a bit too much punch, too. I might just slip up and… golly, I dunno… tell  _ everybody here  _ your dirty little secret. How would Uncle Ferdie feel about that, do you think?”

The actor whimpers, a high-pitched, wobbly noise. “What do you want?”

“Your name, first off.” Buddy doesn’t ease up on the tension, yanking on his silk necktie like it’s a noose. 

“Carl,” he manages. “Carl Tachenko, but I swear to God you cannot tell  _ anyone... _ ”

“Tachenko?” Buddy blinks, and her grip on the tie loosens abruptly. “Like, the ruined empire Tachenkos? I thought...”

“Yeah, yeah, the Kana… Kanawhatsit…  _ Kanagawas _ , and their goddamn streams, they made it seem way more dramatic than it really was.” This Carl kid pulls away and tries to straighten his suit, but his hands are still shaking. “But I still need to, well, do my part, I guess. To keep us going. Even if that does mean selling my soul to the goddamned Altairs.” He grimaces and gulps. “Well? Happy now?” 

Locking away her incredulity, Buddy shakes her head with a flourish. “Not… quite.” She draws herself up to her full height and gazes at him out of the corners of her eyes, letting her lips curve into an inviting smirk. “How would you feel about toppling the Altair family and everything they stand for?”

Carl’s chin quivers. “I… my family needs their money, I can’t just leave…”

“Oh, I’d let you in on the portion of the profits, don’t you worry about that.” Buddy rests her hands on her hips, studying him carefully. “All I need from you is that little key-card there, and a few details on what sort of strike would hurt the Altairs where it hurts most. Then you get ten percent of the cash and a free ride out of here. A win-win scenario, wouldn’t you say?”

Gulping, Carl glances around like a hunted animal. “Well…”

“What do you think, Mr. Tachenko? Are you in, or are you out?”

He swallows again, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it. Then he sets his jaw and nods once. “Okay. I’m in. What do I have to do?”

Vespa paces when she’s stressed. Or when she’s angry. Or when there’s too damn much clogging up her brain, and she needs to sort through it all. Or when...

Yeah, she should probably invest in a good pair of insoles, at this rate. 

She’s been out here on the balcony for four minutes and fifty-six seconds… fifty-seven, now, and the wind is blowing cold this late at night. She can’t wait much longer. She should just slip over the railing and disappear into the night and come up with a convincing excuse to her crew as to why she didn’t kill that idiot kid when she had a chance. God, why did she even decide to trust that redheaded pickpocket? Just because she had a pretty face and a confident voice and eyes like goddamned constellations…

Then, in a whirlwind of skirts and swiftness, the thief sweeps onto the balcony beside her. “All right, darling. The plan is in motion. I’ve talked to the boy who isn’t Liam—you were right about that, by the way, he’s one of the survivors of that catastrophic Tachenko family, you know—and he’s on our side now. All we need to do is slip away from this party, and he’ll show us the schematics of the Altair family mansion and guide us to exactly the vault where all their most priceless paperwork is stored. One hit to take out the whole corrupt lot of them. It’ll be brilliant, darling. Brilliant.” Her cheeks are almost as red as her hair, and she’s bordering on breathless. 

“Paperwork?” Vespa echoes, trying to stay unimpressed. But she can’t help staring at those fiery curls out of the corner of her eye. 

The thief’s teeth flash in the night, glinting with moonlight and the distant neon strobes of the party. “If we leak those secrets, we won’t just be heroes, we’ll be  _ rich _ . I’ve promised Carl ten percent of the cut and a ride out of here, but once that’s done, it’ll just be the two of us, a stolen Altair starship, and our very own buckets and buckets of cold hard cash. We can finally be out on our own. No one can tell us what to do. We can start our own little ring of criminals, or it could just be the two of us. Two girls, against the world. How does that sound to you?” 

Vespa’s pulse pounds in her ears. “I just have one more question.”

“Fire away, love.” The thief drapes herself over the balcony’s balustrade, and her skirts flutter in the evening breeze. 

“We’ve talked a lot about Liam-this and Carl-that, but…” Vespa takes a breath to steel herself. “Will I ever get to know your name? I’m guessing it’s not exactly  _ Rachel _ .”

The thief’s grin is as unexpected and bracing as a sudden summer storm. “I thought you’d never ask. They call me Buddy Aurinko,” she says, relishing in the glamor of every syllable. The name is glorious on her tongue. She looks at home in it, in love with it, even.

Buddy Aurinko. Yes, it seems quite possible that nobody’s name has ever suited them more. Vespa’s heart thuds against her chest as she listens, spellbound. 

And then Buddy turns the question around, and Vespa has a miniature crisis right then and there. “And you, darling? What may I call a fascinating assassin such as yourself?”

As slow as she can, Vespa draws in a long, deep breath. And then she decides to trust Buddy Aurinko.

“Vespa Ilkay.” The assassin pronounces the name carefully, reverently, like she’s never said it out loud before. And Buddy is mesmerized by the sound of it. The name is built around hard consonants and sharp edges, just like Vespa herself seems to be. And yet, there’s a hidden mellifluous sweetness to the sound—a sweetness Buddy finds herself longing to explore.

Vespa Ilkay is trembling imperceptibly in the night air. Her makeup is already smudged, her flowery shirt is far too large for her, her combat boots are scuffed, and her knees are scraped from God knows what rough adventures. And in that exact moment, Buddy Aurinko decides that she will fall for this strange, lovely girl.

Smiling broadly, Buddy extends her hand. “Well then, Vespa, dear. The stars are calling us. Shall we answer?”

And so the two of them—Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy—join hands and coast away into the golden sky on the next night breeze. Neither one has any idea what the future holds in this glittering, invincible moment. They cannot know the difficulty of the diverging road they must each walk alone, and they cannot fathom their joy when that forked path brings them back together. But that might be for the best, after all.

Because for now, they deserve to simply be a pair of teenagers in love. 


End file.
